A Man Without a Wife

by Beverly Bird

  A Man Without a Wife

  Beverly Bird

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 1

  The envelope was the third from the bottom. Dallas Lazo didn’t notice it until he had poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the breakfast bar to flip through the mail. The sounds coming from the living room made him squint, then finally rub his forehead.

  “Hey, Ricky, you want to turn the volume down on that thing?”

  “In a minute, Dad.”

  “Now. I can’t think.”

  “But I almost...” Ricky trailed off. There was a crescendo of beeps and sirens and something that brought to mind the gobbling reflex of a large turkey.

  Dallas leaned sideways in his chair to look through the door into the living room. His son was in front of the television—had he taken root there?—with the Nintendo gadget in his hands. His thumbs and fingers flashed over it. His eyes were wide and unblinking on the screen. If he could play the piano like that he would be a prodigy, Dallas thought, certainly not for the first time. And he wondered, certainly not for the last time, if so much electronic, computerized gadget playing was good for him.

  Mary would have known.

  Dallas rubbed his forehead again. That was a useless thought if ever there was one. Mary Lazo—beloved wife, devoted mother—had died three years earlier, before Nintendo had truly become an issue.

  Abruptly, as though to spare his father such painful thoughts, the noises from the living room stopped. Dallas picked up the mail again. A moment later, Ricky poked his head through the door.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah,” Dallas answered without looking up. Bill, bill, circular... Toss that one.

  “We need to talk.”

  Something funny moved in the area of Dallas’s stomach. Ricky had grown up so much in these past three years. Maybe too much. Maybe more than an eight-year-old boy should have had to. Suddenly he was smart and insightful and sensitive, all the things Dallas had wished for the first time he held him. But the years in between seemed to have gone by in a blink, and along with the smarts and the insight came questions that Dallas sometimes—hell, often—found difficult to answer.

  He sensed one coming now. He put the mail down carefully.

  “I think that’s supposed to be my line, Sport.”

  “Well, it would be if you thought I did something wrong.”

  “Have you?”

  “No!” Ricky hauled himself up on the other chair, his legs swinging.

  “Have I?” Dallas asked, feeling vaguely alarmed.

  “Nope. We just need to talk. You know, like man to man.”

  Dallas’s heart gave an odd thump-hitch-jump. Oh, Mary, babe, I think I need you now. Mary had been a natural mother, taking everything in stride, knowing when to laugh and when to scold. Dallas knew he groped along ground that she would simply have glided over. His love for this child was one of the biggest things that had ever happened to him and he wanted so damned badly to do everything right, especially now, especially since it was just the two of them.

  But Mary couldn’t help him any more. He was alone, as he had been for too, too long.

  “Go ahead,” Dallas said finally, carefully.

  “Well, I been talking to my friends.”

  “I’ve been,” Dallas corrected automatically.

  “Yeah. Anyway, I think you need a woman.”

  The thump-hitch-jump launched his heart to the top of his rib cage. “Uh, just out of curiosity, how old are your friends?”

  Ricky shrugged. “Eight. Nine. Benny’s ten.”

  “Good for Benny. Was this his idea?”

  “It’s not an idea, Dad. You’ve just been grumpy lately.”

  “So you’ve decided I need a wife?”

  Ricky looked aghast. “I didn’t say get married. Just...you know...”

  Good God, Dallas thought. What was happening to the world out there? Had he had thoughts like this when he was eight years old? Then again, maybe he only thought Ricky meant...what he thought he meant.

  “No,” he said cautiously. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Well, Benny and Jon said that if you’re grumpy and you’re not married then you probably got the blue—”

  Dallas put a headlock on him and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t say it. Don’t even say it.”

  “Mfoo bfl.”

  “No.” Ricky struggled and Dallas took his hand away slowly.

  “See, Dad? You’re overacting. That’s because—”

  “Overreacting, and I don’t have blue anything, and if Benny and Jon are gonna talk about stuff like this, then they ought to at least check it out with their dads first.”

  “Benny doesn’t have one.”

  “Well, there’s part of the problem. He’s got his facts mixed up.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah.” Dallas looked at the boy more closely. Black eyes stared back at him avidly. They were easily the most expressive thing about him.

  “The condition you’re referring to comes from...it comes...”

  Ricky waited, then grew impatient. “From what?”

  “It comes when a man’s been...well, with a woman, and nothing comes of it.”

  “With a woman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like kissing and stuff?”

  “Right. But then she stops him before things have a chance to get...consummated.”

  “Comsum-what? How?”

  Dallas cleared his throat and considered telling him that he didn’t need to understand that part yet. But apparently he did, because his friends were talking about it and his friends had their facts all bollixed up.

  Okay, he thought. There was nothing else for him to do now but wade right in.

  He thought he did it with almost flawless delicacy and accuracy. Mary would have been proud. “So you can see that what your friends are talking about isn’t my problem,” he concluded. “Right? Because I haven’t even had a date with a lady since Mom died. I haven’t had a chance to get blue or frustrated or anything else. I haven’t begun anything, so how could I worry about finishing it?” He took a deep swig of his coffee and waited for Ricky’s response, feeling pretty good.

  “Yeah.” The boy scowled. “What you’ve got is even worse.”

  Dallas sputtered coffee. “Is it?”

  “You haven’t even gotten started. Man, this is bad.”

  Dallas cleared his throat. “How about if you let me worry about it?”

  Ricky looked dubious. “No offense, Dad, but you’re not doing so good on your own.”

  “Ricky.” His voice carried a warning note now. It was absurd, ridiculous, to feel threatened by the opinions of an eight-year-old boy, even if he was his son. Dallas knew that, but it wasn’t a subject he felt willing to discuss. He had the strong suspicion that his love life—or lack thereof—was going to be playground fodder on Monday, and the less the boys had to talk about, the better.

  “I said I’ll take care of it,” he repeated tightly. “When and if I want to,” he added quickly, then he relented. “Listen, sport, it’s just not something I feel ready to tackle yet, okay? I loved your mom a whole lot, and I think it would feel...wrong to be with somebody else.” As if he was be
traying her, he thought. As if there was something lacking within him to even try to replace her, because he knew he’d never be able to do that. There was no one else with her gentleness, her wisdom, her brown eyes flashing with humor...and in the end, with pain.

  No, he thought, all in all it was just easier to keep to himself.

  But that wasn’t something he could expect an eight-year-old to understand. “Go on,” he said quietly. “Go back to your game. I promise I won’t complain about the noise this time.”

  Ricky still looked doubtful, but he slid off his chair. A few minutes later the beeping and gobbling resumed in the living room.

  Dallas reached for the mail again. This time, finally, he came to the envelope from Our Lady of Guadalupe Children’s Home. His fingers grew instantly thick and clumsy.

  He crumbled the envelope reflexively in one strong hand and hurled it in the direction of the trash can. It landed on top of the circulars and he stared at it, his breath coming a little too hard. He flexed his hand like a man who had just thrown a punch and had hurt himself more than his opponent.

  Why? After all these years, why would they contact him?

  But he knew. Actually, he’d been half expecting the letter for a while. It was that Tsosie v. McNally thing. Dallas had been following it on the news, on documentaries and on talk shows, listening while everyone buzzed and nobody knew what the hell they were talking about. Now rage spread behind his eyes, affecting his vision and giving him a headache. He wanted to slam his fist into something but he just kept clenching it, open and closed...open and closed.

  It wouldn’t even have been an issue if Mary were still alive, he thought. Mary had possessed some obscure Navajo blood. And Ricky was Navajo. According to the sensationalized thinking behind Tsosie v. McNally, such a kid should be in some kind of spiritual agony if he wasn’t being raised with the influence of his own genetic tribe. No matter that Mary hadn’t known a hogan dwelling from a high-rise. No matter that horses scared her just a little and she had never set foot on the reservation in her life. Her great-grandmother had been Navajo, so no one would have poked his nose into Ricky’s adoption file twice. A cursory look would have told him that Ricky was being raised within his own culture.

  Unfortunately, Ricky’s only surviving parent was a little bit Mexican and a whole lot German, with some Irish and English thrown in for good measure. A mongrel by any description, with not even a shred of Native American blood to show for it.

  Dallas forced himself to swallow. He got up carefully and stiffly and went to the trash can, staring down at the envelope.

  You can’t have him back. He’s mine. But surely they wouldn’t just pluck Ricky out of his expensive Flagstaff condo and deposit him on the reservation, alone and confused. Lord, they couldn’t be that self-righteous and callous, could they? Sure, they had done it with the Tsosie kid, but the Tsosie kid had been unhappy, had felt misplaced. The Tsosie kid had started the whole damned thing, approaching a lawyer, trying to see if he could get his adoption rescinded, opening such a can of moral and political worms that the issue had gone all the way to the Supreme Court.

  But Ricky was fine. Ricky was happy. Ricky didn’t want to go anywhere. This was different.

  So why in the hell were they writing to him?

  Dallas realized that he was afraid. It was the same kind of numbing, emasculating fear he had known when Mary had told him that the test results had come back and she had cancer. He had wanted to slam a fist into something then, too, but that vicious, vile enemy had hidden inside her and he hadn’t been able to reach it. It had lurked within her body, mocking him, taunting him, safe within its confines—nothing you can do, nothing, nothing, ha ha! She’s going to die, die, die!

  Yes, this was different. This was a threat he could fight.

  Dallas reached down into the trash can and snatched up the letter. He opened it and flattened it out on the breakfast bar.

  Dear Mr. Lazo: Our agency has been chosen to cooperate with the United States Supreme Court in an investigation regarding our cross-cultural adoptions. Through a study of our files, it has come to our attention that you and your wife adopted an infant Navajo child from our home. While we recognize that several years have passed since the finalization of this adoption, we feel that a study of his emotional well-being would be in the best interests of both your child and infants yet to be placed. We would appreciate it if you would contact us as soon as possible so that we might set up a conference. No mention of Mary’s death, Dallas realized. Maybe they didn’t even know. Maybe this was just...random. He let out a crazy burst of laughter at the concept of random hell. Eeny-meeny-miny-moe. Gotcha, sucker.

  Like cancer.

  Okay, he told himself. Calm down. Clearly the first thing he had to do was call Nelson Wythe, his best friend, his lawyer, a satisfyingly poor racquetball player. Nelson had handled the adoption in the first place.

  It was Saturday morning, still early. Dallas tried him at home and found him in.

  Nelson listened and was grimly sympathetic. “You had to know this was a possibility, Dallas, what with all the hoopla lately about that Tsosie kid.”

  “Damn possibilities!” Dallas snapped, then he remembered to lower his voice. The beeping and gobbling sounds in the living room kept on without pause. “My kid’s not screwed up. He wants no part of the reservation. They can’t just come barging into private lives like this, tearing things apart on principle.”

  “It’s the Supreme Court. They can do anything they want.”

  “Not with my kid.”

  Nelson hesitated. “Are you sure Ricky doesn’t care about his roots?”

  “Well, hell, he hasn’t said—I mean, we don’t even discuss it.”

  “Listen, Dallas, as your friend and your attorney, my advice would be to cooperate with the Our Lady people. Talk to them. That’s all they want. But if you ignore them, try to dodge them, I’m afraid they’re going to think you’re hiding something. You’ll arouse their suspicions and they’ll get that much more determined. So just show them that Ricky’s fine. They’ll report back to the Supreme Court that case number such and such had a happy ending, and that’ll be that.”

  “Right,” Dallas muttered, his thoughts already racing ahead. “They can’t just go around reversing adoptions, tearing families apart. God, Nelson, there are laws.”

  “And the Supreme Court is there to see to it that the bad ones are revised or revoked.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Dallas demanded.

  “Yours, and you know it. But listen, Dallas, talk to Ricky first. They’ll probably want to spend some time with him, to see for themselves. I’m just thinking that you don’t need any surprises.”

  “You think I’m still shaky,” Dallas accused. “Not entirely balanced after everything with Mary. Is that it?”

  “I think you’re reacting very strongly to the imagined threat that someone’s trying to take something else away from you.”

  “Strongly? I’m reacting naturally. He’s my son—”

  “And nobody has said one word about rescinding his adoption. They just want to talk to you, Dallas.”

  He spat a gratifying four-letter word into the phone.

  “That might help, too,” Nelson answered dryly. “In fact, that might be just what you need. My wife’s got a friend—”

  “Why the hell is everyone so interested in my sex life this morning?” Dallas exploded and instantly regretted it. There was a short moment of silence on the line.

  “Who else is interested?” Nelson asked. “You holding out on me, friend?”

  “Ricky was talking about it,” he muttered.

  “Well, he sounds well adjusted to me.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Dallas ended the conversation and hung up the phone. Then he sat at the breakfast bar again, thinking.

  He’d be damned if he was going to take this lying down.

  “Hey, Ricky,” he called out. “Put that thing down and come back here for a mi
nute. Please,” he added, trying not to be grumpy.

  After a moment the beeping stopped again. Ricky poked his head around the door frame. “Who were you talking to?” he asked.

  “Mr. Wythe.”

  “You gonna play racquetball today? Can I come?”

  “No.” His head was pounding hard now. “I mean, we’re not playing. Maybe tomorrow. Listen, I’ve got to ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  Mary, Mary, how do I put this? Then he realized he really ought to stop talking to her. He only did it silently, never aloud—not really—but if Nelson knew, if the Our Lady of Guadalupe people ever found out...

  God, he was being paranoid.

  He cleared his throat. “Do you...those friends of yours that you mentioned a little while ago. Benny and Jon and the others?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are any of them...Navajo by any chance? Or are they all Anglo or what?”

  Ricky frowned. “I don’t know what they are. What difference does it make?”

  A good, healthy response, Dallas thought. He breathed carefully. “Do you have any problems with them?”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Like not fitting in with them.”

  “Why shouldn’t I fit in?”

  “You should. But sometimes kids get funny ideas. Sometimes they tease.”

  Ricky seemed to think about it, then he shook his head. “Nah. Benny and Jon are my friends. It’s just some of the other guys.”

  Dallas’s breath stopped just as he was getting a handle on it. “Some of the other guys tease you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Is it important?”

  Yes. “Not really.” Surprises.

  “It’s really only one guy anyway. His name’s Randy. He’s one of the freebies.”

  “Freebies,” Dallas repeated carefully.

  “Yeah. That’s what we call them. ‘Cause it costs so much to go to Ashford and his dad can’t afford it, so they let him in for free. They do it for, like, two kids a year. So Randy makes a big deal about the rest of us being rich, even if we’re not. He’s unsecured.”

  “Unse—oh. Insecure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what does he say?”